In What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank asks a damned good question. He asks why working class folk in Kansas, his former home state, are voting for Republicans. According to Frank, the Republican party has no real interest in improving the economic situation of the working class; its plan is simply to make the rich richer. So, why the hell would a guy struggling to make ends meet on a construction worker’s salary vote Republican?

Good question. A damned good question. You know you can write a best selling book based on a good question and never really answer it? Yes, it’s true. Because I just read all 250 pages of Frank’s book looking for the snappy question. Found it. And then the answer. Boom…. Didn’t find it. Even better would have been three factors neatly dovetailed to answer the question. Boom. Boom. Boom…. Didn’t find it.

Frank answers the question in different ways in the book, which was obviously one of those projects that went on for a long time and was just pasted together without the benefit of an editor with cojones to make him stay on point.

Because Frank didn’t have the editor with cojones, I have to be the one to tease out Frank’s answer. How annoying.

The first reason that Frank offers for why the working class votes for Republicans is because the Republican leadership has fooled them with the abortion and cultural issues. The Republican leadership is really moderate on cultural issues and is closely aligned with corporate interests. They offer up an old fashioned bait and switch. Anti-abortion before the election. Repeal the estate tax after the election.

You would think that this bait and switch would only work once. People would get wise to these crass manupulations by party elites. Frank also points out that the pro-lifers have no chance in hell of repealing abortion, so why do they continually vote against their class interest and go Republican?

Well, Frank says that people aren’t all that bright. O’Connor seems peculiarly given to dizzy ideas such this one. Like many of the Cons, she gives the impression of intelligence, choosing and enunciating each word carefully, but she also seems oddly naive, like a person who has sat down and worked out the world’s problems all on her own. (p.171)

Another reason is that the Republicans have found a whole pile of dumb grassroots activists, like O’Connor, who tirelessly knock on doors pushing the cultural agenda. In one of his more interesting chapters, Frank profiles a few of these activists, who all come from very modest means. Tim Golba, a line worker at a soda pop bottling company, spends every free minute putting Republicans in office. Golba is a misguided martyr. He denies himself so that others might luxuriate in fine mansions; he labors night and day so that others might enjoy their capital gains and never have to work at all.

Yet another reason is that Republican propagandists like Coulter, Hannity, and Limbaugh have generated a powerful backlash message that resonates with people from Kansas. They talk about the individual fighting against the establishment, the elite, the moneyed class out in the East. The poor guy in the soda factory buys into it and blames the wrong guy for his rundown community. Frank can’t help himself and points out that the pro-slavery faction in Kansas used the same rhetoric back in the day. So, even if the Republicans aren’t racists, there is that connection. Wink. Wink.

One short paragraph on page 176 and then again way, way at the end, Frank offers one last point. Maybe the fault could lay somewhat on the Democratic leadership. Bill Clinton and others went too far to the right on economics, so the people no longer have a clear choice on those issues. All there is left to fight about is cultural matters. Democrats have also done a lousy job of reaching out to the working class and putting their people in the trenches. Ya think?

Other little bits of half-baked ideas are offered here and there. People just like being part of the winning team. Unions, which do help keep people on focus, are on decline. But he doesn’t go into those ideas enough to give them much weight.

As much as I’m annoyed by Frank’s lack of ability to provide me with the Boom Boom Boom answer to his question, I didn’t hate the book. Yeah, his belief that the working class is dumb really sets me off, too, but Frank’s book has its merits.

Frank talks about class. He talks about the growing gap between rich and the struggling in America. He does offer some, though not enough for me, criticisms of the Democratic leadership for falling down on the job. He puts the issue of economics back on the table. For this, along with his snappy question, Frank deserves praise.